Sources for Chartism: Chartist Women 4

The rights of women

Chartist leaders needed to appeal to women workers and gain their support, especially in northern industrial areas. At the same time, they were asking for the vote in order to protect women from the exploitation of employment in factories and mines, and to recover the domestic harmony of an imagined earlier world. Although sometimes male and female Chartists co-operated in strike action, Chartists were for the most part calling for the exclusion of women from the work force. The Chartist demand for citizenship was not based on the right of property or of heads of households; Chartists would not, for instance, exclude the rights of sons. It could be based on the natural rights argument. Women’s political enfranchisement was however a matter of some interest among Chartist leaders, and the issue had been raised when the Charter was first drafted. The view that this demand would be ridiculed and would delay male suffrage had prevailed. But Chartists could also recast the older arguments to claim the vote on the basis of property in the skill of the worker, and those who did so tended to assume that skill was a masculine monopoly. Nevertheless there was considerable support for women’s rights and some leaders, like R. J. Richardson and Ernest Jones continued to defend women’s suffrage throughout the 1840s and 1850s. However, they did not always find it easy to reconcile women’s suffrage with the language of domesticity. Women Chartists were never nominated for any local or national committees, and played no part in the direction of the movement.

Source 8: R. J. Richardson, The Rights of Woman, 1840, reprinted in Dorothy Thompson The Early Chartists, Macmillan, 1971, pages 115-119

Having occupied some time in shewing you the natural degree of woman, also her scriptural qualifications and her physical inequality, I shall now proceed to the main feature of the question, or rather to the question itself-"Ought Women to interfere in the political affairs of the country?" As I have before prepared you, by an abstract dissertation upon the natural rights of woman, I do most distinctly and unequivocally say-YES! And for the following reasons:

First, Because she has a natural right.

Second, Because she has a civil right.

Third, Because she has a political right.

Fourth, Because it is a duty imperative upon her.

Fifth, Because it is derogatory to the divine will to neglect so imperative a duty.

The first reason I hope I have sufficiently argued before and established its truth.

The second is, in a certain degree, answered by the establishment of the first reason; but is addition I may say, that it is nowhere written in the body of the civil law, that woman, by reason of her sex, is disqualified from the exercise of political right except by her own voluntary act. Grotius, Puffendorf, Montesquieu, Vattel, and other famous civilians, have nowhere consented to such an unjust exclusion; the only instance on record where we find this right disputed, is in the famous controversy between Philip of Valois, and Edward III, concerning the Salic law, by which females and their descendants are excluded from the monarchy of France, and from the inheritance of the allodial lands of the nobility, the latter part of the law has long become obsolete, and the former is nowhere acted upon except in France, proving that the doctrine of the exclusion of females from political power is not consonant with the law of nature and nations.

Again, civilians teach us the doctrine of community of persons and community of rights, as the best mode of establishing a pure commonwealth, in strict accordance with the genuine principles of liberty. Surely then it cannot be argued, that any inequality should prevail, or that any distinction should exist in a community, where all things are held in common, or in trust for the good of that community. Of course I now speak of society in its purest state, but it is a legitimate argument in favour of my position; for as all political law is based upon the civil law, so are those political institutions best that proximate nearest to the original standard of civil liberty.

Civilians tell us also, that for all the uses of society woman stands upon an equal footing with man; for all the purposes of civil government, woman is equally admissible to office; for the due promotion of the welfare of the state, woman is essentially necessary in conjunction with man. These three positions I shall mention when I advance my arguments in favour of Reason Third.

I ask upon what ground can this civil right be abridged diverted or abrogated? I ask those who tyrannically withhold from woman her political rights, on what assumption do they do so? I challenge them to sustain their opinions. I invite them to discussion, and will appear to maintain my proud position as the vindicator of the rights of woman against any one who may be so lost to a sense of shame as to oppose helpless woman in pursuit of her just rights.

The third reason I advance in justification of my emphatic approval of the question at issue is, because I conceive Woman has a political right to interfere in all matters concerning the state of which she is a member, more especially as applied to Great Britain, for the following reasons:

1^st-Because, by the ancient laws of the English constitution, she is admissible to every executive office in the kingdom, from the monarch upon the throne to the parish Overseer, the village sexton , or the responsible office of post mistress, which is still common in small towns.

2^nd-Because, by the present law of tenures, of powers, of contracts, of bargains and sale, of inheritance, of wills, and every other matter or thing touching the rights of property and transfer, woman (except in femme covert,) is qualified to be, and therefore, is admissible as a contracting party, save during her minority or a ward in chancery, then her affairs are managed by trust.

3^rd-Because, woman is responsible in her own person for any breach of contract, for any offence against the peace and laws of the land. In the church, by the penalties of imprisonment, excommunication, and premunire; in the state, by fine, imprisonment, banishment, and death.

4^th-Because she is taxed in the same degree with others for the maintenance of the state and its appendages under all circumstances.

5^th-and lastly, because, she contributes directly and indirectly to the wealth and resources of the nation by her labour and skill.

On these five reasons I found my opinion upon the great question, "Ought woman to interfere in the affairs of the state?" and to that question I again I answer Yes! emphatically YES!

To the first of these reasons I will add, if a woman is of nullifying the powers of Parliament or the deliberate resolutions of the two estates of the realm, by parity of reason, a woman in a minor degree ought to have a voice in the election of the legislative authorities. If it be admissible that the queen, a woman, by the constitution of the country can command, can rule over a nation, (and I admit the justice of it,) then I say, woman in every instance ought not to be excluded from her share in the Executive and legislative power of the country.

To the second reason I will add further, if a woman can exercise the powers of a conductor, or vendor, or become heiress, testatrix, executrix or administratix, and act in such important capacities over matters and things daily arising out of transactions with real and personal property, I say that it perfectly justifies my opinion that woman is not only qualified, but ought by virtue of such qualification , to have a voice in the making those laws under which the above transactions take place.

The third reason I will illustrate by saying, that, if women be subject to pains and penalties, on account of the infringement of any law or laws,- even unto death,- in the name of common justice, she ought to have a voice in making the laws she is bound to obey.

The fourth reason is next in importance to the last, so long as the legislature claim and levy a portion of the worldly income of a woman for the support of the state, surely it is not presumption in woman to claim the right of electing that legislature who assume the right to tax her, and on refusal, punish her with pains and penalties; it is unjust to withhold from her her fair share of the elective power of the state, it is tyranny in the extreme, and ought to be properly resisted.

The fifth Reason is equal in importance to the last, and in support of which, I shall extend my arguments. It is a most incontrovertible fact, that woman contribute to the wealth and resources of the kingdom. The population in Great Britain in 1831 consisted of 16,255,605, which may be classified under the head of agriculture, mining, and manufacturing; from these three sources the wealth of a country is raised. Now let us begin with agriculture, and see what share the women take of the labour necessary to produce the food of the people, the rent of the landlord, and the taxes of the state. In the first place, the dairy is managed almost exclusively by woman and girls; the small live stock, such as poultry, &c., wholly so. Look to the cheese counties of Gloucester and Chester, where the female population is almost wholly employed in the dairy. Look to the milk and butter counties around the large towns, and see the number of females who are employed in milking and making butter, and bringing them to market. In a farmyard the smallest child performs some labour or other, feeding poultry, driving cows, &c. In the fields, again, we find women performing every kind of labour except draining, hedging, ditching, fencing, ploughing, and mowing. We find them driving, sowing, setting, harrowing, drilling, manuring, weeding, hoeing, picking stones, gathering potatoes, turnips, pulling carrots, mangelwurzel, shearing, binding, gathering, hay-making, &c. &c. The boys and girls too, are employed in picking stones, driving, scare-crowing, tending sheep, gathering roots, &c. In the barn, with the exception of thrashing and handicraft work, women perform every other occupation. There is no country in Europe where the women are such slaves upon the soil as they are in Scotland. I have many times counted twenty or thirty woman in one field to about four or five men and boys. It is quite common to see women in the same unequal proportion to men labouring in the fields at every kind of predial labour; and many times I have been tempted too exclaim, Surely the curse of God is not upon the woman instead of the man! For in the language of holy writ, he declared to Adam, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” And many times I have in my heart blamed men for allowing their women to be such slaves, to perform such labour that nature never intended them to do, nor befitted them for the task. Inured to such toils and hardships, she becomes masculine; and the force of all those tender passions implanted by God in the breast if woman to temper the ruggedness of man, become weakened, her real virtues forgotten, and her proper usefulness destroyed. To the men of Scotland, I say, Shame! To the women I say, endeavour to throw off the degradation of predial slavery, return to your domestic circles and cultivate your finger feelings for the benefit of your off-spring. How can you expect men, who seek only “to command and overbear” others, to look to other than their own selfish interests? Rouse you, and let future historians record your zeal in the cause of human redemption, and you will confer a perpetual obligation on posterity. Debased is the man who would say women have no right to interfere in politics, when it is evident, that they have as much right as “sordid man”. None but a tyrant, or some cringing, crawling, hireling scribe, succumbing to the footstool of power, would dare to say so.

The Normans in Southern Italy: A Holy War?

The evidence clearly indicates that the Normans who made their careers in the central Mediterranean, especially Duke Robert Guiscard of Apulia and his brother Count Roger I of Sicily, fostered their image as proto-crusaders throughout their campaigns against the Sicilian Muslims and the Byzantines. They also, as described above, took on the chivalric role of protectors of the Papacy, and as such safeguarded Papal elections and defended Pope Gregory VII against King Henry IV of Germany, who attempted to depose him and appoint a new Pope. But it is difficult to conclude that the Normans were deeply moved by the prospect of being ‘soldiers of Christ’, for in order to do so one must reconcile their chivalric Christian warrior image with their reputation for brigandage and piracy.

The reason for the arrival of the Normans in Italy is unclear, but various traditions relate that the local population asked for their assistance while the Normans were passing through on pilgrimage. Amatus of Monte Cassino claims that a group of Normans stopped in Salerno on their way back from visiting the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and that during their sojourn a group of Saracen raiders arrived and demanded tribute from the Salernitans. “And the Norman pilgrims saw this, they could not stand such injustice of the lordship of the Saracens, nor that the Christians were subjected to the Saracens.”[1]  The Normans then drove off the Saracens, and the overjoyed Salernitans invited them to stay and help protect them against future raids by the heathen. The pilgrims, however, preferred to return home, but they promised to pass the word in Normandy that there were many opportunities for employment in Italy available to brave Norman knights.

This incident may well have taken place, but the Normans’ primary reason for going to Italy was probably not to save the Christian population from the Muslim menace. The fact that a new feudal aristocracy was on the rise in Normandy in the early eleventh century, resulting in the uprooting of many families from their land, more plausibly explains the Normans’ southward migration. Because Italy was war-torn and practically in a state of anarchy, it was a good place for the displaced knights to profit from their famed warrior skills and acquire estates of their own. David C. Douglas assesses the situation convincingly: “Whatever truth may lurk behind the belief that these men were pilgrims who performed prodigies of valour against the pagans, the fact remains that the Normans who first came to Italy are better to be regarded as armed adventurers seeking their fortunes in a distracted land and living by violence and pillage.”[2]

As such, they were very successful, winning victory after victory, initially for their employers but eventually for themselves and in accumulating wealth and land. They were ruthless in their tactics and, as their power increased, so did their notoriety. They incurred the loathing of the Italians, to the point that Pope Leo IX, in response to the pleas of the Lombards who were most often the victims of Norman rapine, took it upon himself to protect his flock and rid the world of the Norman menace. He dubbed the Normans enemies of Christendom and declared a genuine Holy War against them. He gained the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Byzantine Emperor, and various other nobles by emphasising the sanctity of the mission. To those whom he recruited for the mission he provided a spiritual incentive: Amatus claims. “And he promised to give absolution for their sins.”[3] Before setting out for the battle from Benevento, Leo dramatically stressed to the German and Lombard soldiers (the Greeks had not arrived yet) their divine purpose: "And the Pope with the bishops climbed up onto the walls of the City, and looked at the multitude of his knights to absolve them of sin, and gave pardon for the penance they had to do for their sins."[4]  He is even said to have promised that anyone who died in battle with the Normans would become a martyr and go directly to heaven. Leo offered absolution in exchange for military assistance, just as Pope Urban II would do for the First Crusaders at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Civitate is the first example of the Pope directly declaring Holy War: but this time it was against fellow Christians, and it occurred 42 years before Urban called for the First Crusade to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims.[5]

The Normans defeated Leo, however, so it is a bit surprising that subsequent Popes continued to declare wars for the salvation of Christendom or that the Normans themselves would often be at the forefront of these Holy Wars. The synod of Melfi in 1059 shows that the Papacy had not at all given up on the idea of the Holy War; Pope Nicholas II seems simply to have realised that future Crusades would be more appropriately fought against non-Christians, and that the Papacy needed to be more selective when conscripting ‘soldiers of Christ’ before it declared any more Crusades. Facing troubles in Rome and lacking the support of the Eastern and Western Emperors, Nicholas decided that it was in the Apostolic See’s best interests to have the fierce Norman warriors on its side.  The synod made the Normans the official feudal protectors of the Papacy. They were henceforth responsible not only for safeguarding the material possessions of the Pope (his lands and revenues) but they were also charged with making sure nothing prevented the cardinal bishops from conducting canonical Papal elections. This facet of the Papacy’s alliance with the Normans continued the tradition established by Leo IX whereby the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ and His representative on Earth, could call for military support in order to enforce ecclesiastical policy and direct armies in order to secure the best interests of Christendom. The fact that the specific ecclesiastical policy that the Papacy needed the Normans to enforce was the Papal election decree, which aimed to separate the Church from the influence of laymen, is indeed ironic; but the Normans did proceed in the following years to support canonically elected Popes against usurpers, and they never tried to install their own friends as popes after the fashion of the German Emperors.

The Normans carried out their job as Papal protectors with fervor. This went along with the doctrine of fighting under the Pope’s, and by extension God’s command, spread quickly to their other campaigns. In his oath to Pope Nicholas II, Robert Guiscard calls himself “by the grace of God and St. Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, with the help of both, future duke of Sicily.”[6] Such ambitious wording in the context of an oath of vassalage to the Papacy obviously implies that the Papacy was ready to back a Norman attempt at conquering the island, from which Muslim pirates had been conducting devastating raids against the mainland for over two centuries. The cause was quite worthy of blessing, for it meant the subjugation of dangerous and aggressive infidels and the reunification of the Greek Christians of Sicily with the rest of the Christian world or at least with the Latin Christian world over which the Pope exercised his authority.

Thus Pope Alexander II blessed Robert and sent him off with a Papal banner in 1061.[7] The contemporary sources indicate that Robert himself adopted some of this enthusiasm for the divine cause. Amatus (who, admittedly, sought to glorify Robert Guiscard and Richard of Capua) claims that reports of the Saracens oppressing the Christians in Sicily stirred Robert. Inspired to cross the straits of Messina and liberate his Christian brothers, he cried out to his knights:  “I would like to deliver the Christians and the Catholics, who are constrained by the servitude of the Saracens, and I desire greatly to break them of their servitude, and avenge the injury to God.”[8]  He then gathered an army, and according to Geoffrey Malaterra, a monk of Sant’ Agatha in Catania (Sicily) who chronicled the Normans’ exploits at the request of Count Roger I, Robert called on his followers before they left the mainland to confess their sins and place their trust in Spiritus Sanctus cooperator, “the Holy Spirit our ally,” and Deum ordinatorem et fortiorem gubernatorem, “God our commander and steadfast guide.”[9] The Norman leaders thus used the pretext of fighting, with God’s assistance, for fellow Christians against enemies of Christendom in order to boost the morale of their expeditionary force. The Norman knights were presumably inspired by their sanctified cause, and motivated to put forth their best effort in the upcoming campaign.

The Normans could also hope to utilise the ‘Holy War’ mentality in order to gain the support of the Greek Christian population of Sicily. The Muslim emirs who had ruled the island since the ninth century, however, had not oppressed the Greek Sicilians. The Saracens were tolerant of their religion, and they did not exclude the Greeks from the prosperity they had brought to Sicily, which was at the center of the Muslim Mediterranean world and thus a thriving centre for trade. But the Greeks must have been attracted by the prospect of being reunited with Christendom, and the Normans did what they could to cultivate this attraction and inspire the Greeks with the spirit of liberation from the clutches of the infidels. As soon as the Normans took possession of Messina in 1061 and sent the Saracen population of the city fleeing inland, Robert Guiscard organised a thanksgiving ceremony with the Greek population in their church in order to emphasise the spirit of deliverance.[10] From Messina the Normans advanced inland through the Val Demone, where the Greek Christians did indeed view them as liberators: they greeted them enthusiastically, running out to meet them and bringing them gifts.[11] The Norman ‘crusaders’ thus succeeded in convincing their new Greek subjects to offer their loyalty.

The theme of the ‘Holy War’ pervaded the entire venture to subdue the Muslims of Sicily. In 1063, when the Normans were outnumbered at the battle of Cerami and pondering retreat, Malaterra says that Roger encouraged them with these words: Arrigite animos vestros, o fortissimi christianae militiae tyrones. Omnes Christi titulo insigniti sumus. “Harden your spirits, most courageous recruits of the Christian knights. We are all inscribed with the sign of Christ.” While the Great Count was speaking, apparuit quidam eques, splendidus in armis, equo albo insidens album vexillum in summitate hastilis alligatum ferens et desuper splendidam crucem. “A certain knight appeared, shining in arms, sitting on a white horse, carrying a white standard on the top of his lance and a shining cross from above.” This was none other than St. George, who rallied the Normans and led them to victory over the superior Saracen force.[12]  When the crusaders finally made their way to Palermo and defeated the Muslim garrison, their first act was to reconsecrate the Church of St. Mary, which the Muslims had used as a mosque for over two hundred and forty years, and hold mass there with the city’s Greek Archbishop. This was a very momentous occasion, for the Normans had restored to Christian hands one of the most populous, prosperous, and culturally rich cities in the Mediterranean.[13] Amatus reports that yet another apparition graced the thanksgiving mass: a choir of angels sang in the church, and a heavenly light illuminated the mass.[14]

There are several reasons for questioning whether or not the Norman conquerors of Sicily were indeed as motivated by piety as Amatus and Malaterra claim. For one thing, the Normans by no means unequivocally hated the Muslims. They gained their first foothold on the island by allying with one Sicilian emir, Ibn at-Timnah, to fight against another Sicilian emir, Ibn al-Hawas.[15] They never tried to force the Sicilian Muslims to convert to Christianity; such a policy would never have succeeded, and it certainly would have made the task of governing the island impossible. The Normans could not risk provoking the Muslims into declaring a jihad in retaliation for the Christian holy war. Both Robert Guiscard and Roger went on to employ Saracen mercenaries in their later campaigns. Moreover, these accounts come from authors who intended to eulogise the Normans, for they wrote for Norman audiences and were employed by Norman patrons. Thus the authors were significantly biased in the way they projected heroic and chivalric ideals upon their Norman protagonists. But they also must have been writing exactly what the Normans wanted to believe about themselves, and what the Normans wanted the Pope and all other Christians to believe about them. Hence we can conclude that the Normans revered and actively cultivated their ‘crusader’ image. This form of propaganda must have stirred genuine religious feelings in the Norman knights and boosted their morale. The Normans’ crusader image elevated their status and made their campaigns seem like just wars and their victories like triumphs for Latin Christendom, not just successful acts of piracy and brigandage.

The same zeal pervaded the Normans’ adventures in the Balkans in 1081. Now they were fighting not against Muslims but Christians, although the Latins perceived the Greeks as heretics as a result of the schism of 1054. This time Pope Gregory VII himself declared his Norman vassals to be soldiers of Christ and sent them off with his benediction.[16] Anna Comnena, the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus’s daughter, includes a description of the Normans in her history of her father’s reign, the Alexiad, which she wrote around 1148. Anna makes them out to be just as pious and reverent as they are in Amatus’s and Malaterra’s descriptions. The night before they went to battle with Alexius at Dyrrachium, she writes that Robert led his soldiers to pray: “With all his forces he arrived at the sanctuary built long ago by the sea in honour of the martyr Theodorus. All that night the Normans, in an attempt to propitiate the Deity, were partaking of the holy and divine mysteries.”[17] Anna truly hated the Normans for the destruction they inflicted upon her father’s Empire, so it is certain that she did not give this account in order to glorify the Normans for their faith. She may, however, be foreshadowing the First Crusade that Pope Urban II called fourteen years later and in which Norman warriors played a prominent part. Her testimony thus confirms that the Normans were motivated not by the desire for conquest alone, but also by a sincere belief that they were on God’s side.

---

[1] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 1.17.

[2] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, page 39.

[3] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 3.23.

[4] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 3.37.

[5] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, pages 99-100. Jonathan Riley-Smith, (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, page 78. Steven Runciman, The First Crusade, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, page 42f.

[6] Oath of Robert Guiscard to Pope Nicholas II: translated in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State: 1050-1300, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, page 44.

[7] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, page 102.

[8] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 5.12.

[9] Gaufredus Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis Fratris Eius, Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1928, 2.9.

[10] John Julius Norwich, The Normans in Sicily, Penguin Books, 1992, page 141.

[11] Gaufredus Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis Fratris Eius, Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1928, 2.14.

[12] Gaufredus Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis Fratris Eius, Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1928, 2.33.

[13] John Julius Norwich, The Normans in Sicily, Penguin Books, 1992, pages 176f, 183.

[14] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 6.20.

[15] John Julius Norwich, The Normans in Sicily, Penguin Books, 1992, page 135.

[16] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, page 102.

[17] Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, translated E. R. A. Sewter, Penguin, 1969, page 146.